Will New Jersey Wineries Finally Get Respect?
The ‘Judgment At Don’s House’ Stuns The International Wine Geek Community!
New Jersey’s Alba Vineyard tasting room is full of awards and medals but what it needs is a little respect.
Wines from New Jersey are the Rodney Dangerfield of the wine world – they don’t get no respect. Winemakers here sometimes feel like the rest of the world hates their wines. How could that be? The rest of the world hasn’t tasted them yet.
New Jersey’s wine industry has made impressive strides in quality over the past decade, even though the Garden State still sucks when it comes to bridge traffic studies. And while Millville isn’t exactly Oakville, winemakers from around the world are still genuinely surprised when they taste certain New Jersey wines. Their response is typically, “Am I being punked? Where did this wine really come from?”
Read MoreNew Jersey Wineries Are Bringing Home The Bling.
Alba Vineyard in Milford New Jersey.
I recently picked up a brochure about all the great things happening in New Jersey. It was a very thin brochure. As I perused the pamphlet I was beginning to think there’s not much to do here once you’ve seen Lucy the Elephant (six stories tall in Margate) or visited the world’s largest light bulb (14 feet tall, 8 tons in Edison). But then a section about New Jersey wineries caught my eye.
I was shocked to learn my beloved state is now host to approximately fifty wineries. As recently as the year 2000 there were only a dozen New Jersey wineries and after visiting one a few decades ago I didn’t see any reason to build more. Fifty New Jersey wineries reminded me of that old joke about bad diner food; “This food is horrible, but at least there’s lots of it.”
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